


Strange wonders that befell thee

by mozaikmage



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Gen, M/M, Magic, Stars, Yuuri is a wizard, victor is literally a star
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 06:10:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14372589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mozaikmage/pseuds/mozaikmage
Summary: The rumor was, if someone could catch a falling star and hold it in their hands, their most precious wish would be granted.





	Strange wonders that befell thee

**Author's Note:**

> title from Song by John Donne

The star shower was an annual thing, in Hasetsu. Not a meteor shower, but a star shower, specifically. 

One night a year, every year, stars rained down from the sky, landing in the river and the rice fields and filling the air with strange, slightly effervescent steam. Everyone in the town went out with baskets and buckets to collect the stars once they fell, although the light of a star went out the minute it touched the earth, leaving a lump of warm, dense metal in its place.

The rumor was, if someone could catch a falling star and hold it in their hands, their most precious wish would be granted. But the star showers were dangerous, hot and fast, and it was better to stay indoors and watch the shower from a safe distance than risk getting hurt. 

One night when Katsuki Yuuri was seven, he dreamed he caught a falling star. He did the responsible thing and told his mother about the dream, because dreams were important. When you dreamed, Yuuri knew, it was because something was going to happen.

“Catching stars is a dangerous business,” his mother said, but when Yuuri quietly slipped out the back door at sunset, she didn’t try to stop him.

It was strange, being out alone after dark. It didn’t feel that dark, though. The sky was the dull purplish pink of a snowy evening, but full of stars instead of clouds. Yuuri walked along the back roads to the river, which was as far as he was allowed to walk by himself usually. He sat down on the bridge and waited. A moment later, he flopped down on his back instead, so he could better see the star shower.

Streaks of light sailed overhead, most landing too far away for Yuuri to see. A star dropped into the river with a splash that rattled the bridge, making Yuuri jump. He curled his fingers over the middle railing, and waited. For what, he wasn’t sure. 

The star, when it came crashing into Yuuri’s waiting arms, was larger than he expected, and so bright he had to close his eyes against the glare. Large and round and heavy, like a watermelon of pure light. Yuuri felt the roar of its approach rather than heard it. 

He twisted around so he was leaning backwards against the railing, and stretched out his arms like someone anticipating a hug. For a terrifying second, he thought it was going to hit him full-force in the face and melt his skin off, or worse, melt his glasses off. (He’d just gotten the glasses a month ago, and they were expensive.) Yuuri screwed his eyes shut tight.

But the star, when it made impact, didn’t melt anything. It felt hot like a mug of steaming tea, not too hot to touch. Yuuri’s entire body felt warmed by it, and the insides of his eyelids burned. He held on tight, because that’s what the stories said to do, and hoped the star knew what his most precious wish was, because he definitely didn’t know it himself.

After a long moment, the light and heat faded, and the night air felt cooler than it did before. The thing Yuuri was holding didn’t feel as heavy, either. Yuuri carefully opened one eye. 

“ _ Put me down _ ,” the star said. He put it down in the middle of the bridge, and took a few steps back to observe what would happen.

The star unfolded itself into a human shape, stretching and morphing like clay, until Yuuri found himself facing a boy, a fair bit taller and thinner than Yuuri himself was, but who looked to be just a few years older. The boy was pale, with long, swirling silver hair and eyes reflecting the river below them. He was wearing the same shirt and pants as Yuuri, which made Yuuri wonder if the star had copied him on purpose.

“I’m Victor,” the boy said, smiling tentatively.

“I’m Yuuri,” Yuuri said.

Around them, the stars continued to fall.

 

Yuuri’s parents took it rather well when their youngest came home from the star shower and said, “This is Victor, he’s the star I caught,” in a voice that was only a little shaky. They made up a spare room in the inn for Victor, and gave him a bowl of katsudon.

Victor stared at the bowl, completely mystified. He picked up one chopstick and speared a piece of pork with it, and then stared at that.

“Do stars eat?” Hiroko whispered to her husband, right as Yuuri realized,  _ Victor has no idea what this is. _

“I don’t know,” Victor replied in a contemplative voice, and then beamed. “Let’s find out!”

“Wait, you can’t eat like that,” Yuuri jumped in. He took the bit of pork off the end of the chopstick and showed Victor how to hold them properly. The whole family then watched with bated breath as the star took his first bite, chewed, and swallowed.

“Good!” he said, and everyone sighed with relief.

“Do stars sleep?” Yuuri asked, when it was time to get ready for bed.

“Yes,” Victor said with a yawn. “I’m not really a star anymore either, I think. I’m mostly human. That’s what happens when we fall.” He stretched his arms up and leaned back, and Yuuri was surprised at how long and thin Victor was. Yuuri had always thought of stars as small and round little golden things. Victor seemed more like a crescent moon that swung out of the sky and down to earth.

They’d reached the door to Victor’s room by then. Victor paused and looked at the traditional-style door, gently pushing it forward, then pulling backwards on the edge, then sliding it to the right and gasping in delight when it opened.

“Do you know what I wished for?” Yuuri blurted out. “...Only it’s supposed to be that if you catch a star you get your most precious wish granted, but I couldn’t think of anything when I caught you, so I don’t know what my wish was.” He pushed his glasses further up on his nose a bit, embarrassed.

Victor turned around to face Yuuri then. “Hm,” he said. “I don’t know exactly, but I’m sure we’ll find out someday!”

Yuuri noticed that Victor had said “we” and not “you,” and wondered.

 

Victor lived with the Katsukis from then on. He slotted into the rhythm of Hasetsu life easier than anyone could have predicted, his naive curiosity about everything and anyone endearing him to the entire town. He learned that Yuuri wanted to be a wizard and declared that he was going to help.

“I do know about magic,” Victor exclaimed. “Maybe that was what you’d wished for, someone to teach you magic things.”

Victor showed Yuuri how to see the future by rolling an apple around a porcelain plate, and how to make fire crackle from his hands into the fireplace. And as the days and weeks turned into months and years, Yuuri learned to use his magic to help people, to make the world a little better.

One day when Yuuri was ten, he took Victor down to the beach and showed him how to hear the mermaids, singing softly beneath the sounds of the seagulls and the waves crashing against the rocks. It was a rare sunny day in the middle of the rainy season, and the water seemed to reflect the color of Victor’s eyes.

“Have you ever met a mermaid?” the star asked, kicking a rock with his foot. “Have you ever heard them sing up close?”

“They live pretty deep down. I don’t think they’d want to sing to me,” Yuuri said with a slight laugh.

Victor looked at Yuuri with his wide blue eyes and said, “Who wouldn’t want to sing to you?” 

Yuuri didn’t know what to say to that.

The years ticked forward. When he was thirteen, Yuuri started a seven-year apprenticeship under Okukawa Minako. Victor decided to go traveling.

“Your world seemed so small from the sky,” Victor said, “But there’s so much of it I still haven’t seen up close.” He wore his hair in a braid now, blue roses woven through the silver strands. “And,” Victor said, taking a deep breath, “I think we could both benefit from some time apart, Yuuri.”

Yuuri squeezed his eyes closed against the flood of tears threatening to break, and nodded once. He spent the next week helping Victor pack and get ready, and when they walked together to the train station on the far edge of town, Yuuri did not cry. They stood in a corner of the train platform, away from the other passengers, and said their goodbyes.

“I’ll miss you,” he said, in a measured, steady voice.

“I’ll miss you, too,” Victor said.

Yuuri took a step closer, and then a leap. “I love you,” he said, wavering a bit this time.

Victor was standing so close that Yuuri could feel the star boy’s breath on his face. “I know,” Victor whispered.

They stood there like that for a moment, and then Yuuri pulled Victor into a tight embrace. “You have to come back, okay?” he whispered fiercely. “Go wherever, it doesn’t matter. Just come back when you’re done.”

“Of course I will,” Victor said, sounding surprised that Yuuri would ever think otherwise.

The train pulled into the station then, and Yuuri let go.

Victor was right, Yuuri thought, when he said that they needed some time apart. Without Victor constantly by his side, Yuuri found himself making friends with more people around Hasetsu, and concentrating more on his studies. Sometimes Victor would send letters, or postcards, or gifts. Victor’s gifts were strange and rare things. The morning of Yuuri’s fifteenth birthday, Yuuri woke up to a room filled with flowers made of frost and ice. The flowers turned into steam when he breathed on them, leaving behind nothing but a small card that said, “Happy birthday, Yuuri!” on it. 

“How am I supposed to outdo that next month, huh?” Yuuri scribbled in his letter to Victor later. (The Katsukis always celebrated the anniversary of the day Victor showed up as his birthday, even though no one was quite sure how old he was.)

“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Victor responded.

As the time went by and they got used to the separation, Yuuri found himself writing less and less letters. Victor was halfway across the world from him, and the end of Yuuri’s apprenticeship was coming up soon. Wizarding apprenticeships always ended with a trial, a performance in front of a panel of judges of all the young talent could do.

Katsuki Yuuri, at nearly twenty years old, was worried that the panel of judges would find out that he could not do anything at all.

“Who am I kidding,” he whispered miserably to himself in the bathroom of the stadium. “I’m not a wizard, I’m still learning. I still have so much to learn.”

“You’ll always have something to learn. The question is what can you do with what you know now,” a voice said behind him. Yuuri whirled around, embarrassed apologies on the tip of his tongue, and froze.

“Victor,” he whispered.

Victor was still taller than Yuuri, though not by as much. His hair was shorter than Yuuri remembered ever seeing it before, bleached to near-white by the sun, and his pale skin was a slightly sunburned pink.

“Surprise?” Victor smiled, a little uncertainly.

Yuuri hugged him tightly, but only for a second. “Thank you, Victor.”

They walked to the arena together. “Just don’t take your eyes off me,” Yuuri said, and stepped into the magic circle.

Yuuri’s conjurings dissolved into puffs of colored smoke, and he bowed. The judges conferred quietly, and Yuuri’s gaze snapped to the stands, where Victor and Minako and his family were waiting. 

The head judge cleared her throat. “The panel has decided to confer onto Katsuki Yuuri the title of Wizard,” she said, floating a piece of paper into Yuuri’s hands. “Congratulations.”

Yuuri’s small audience erupted into cheers, and Victor’s arms were wrapped around him

again.

“Congratulations,” Victor whispered into Yuuri’s ear.

“Victor,” Yuuri said. He took a small step back. “I think I know what I wished for, all those years ago.”

“Oh?” 

Yuuri stepped forward again, and pressed his lips to Victor’s.  _ So this is how it feels, _ he thought,  _ to love a star. _

**Author's Note:**

> talk to me on [tumblr](http://cubistemoji.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](http://twitter.com/mashazart/)  
> 


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